SmartNav 3/4 and Google Earth

[Sean]

Hi Folks,

I'm having, and have had for a few years, trouble with SmartNav 3 & 4 units moving the mouse pointer in Google Earth. When navigating over a satellite or photographic image the pointer movement is delayed by several seconds or a best jittery. As soon as the pointer moves to the top menu, sidebar or windows taskbar normal fast pointer movement resumes.

I haven't had time to look further into the problem for memory conflicts etc or gone through the forum to look for a solution. Has anyone else had trouble with Google Earth? Has this issue been raised and solved already?

Tech details:
Dell 8400, Pentium 4, 3GHz, 1GB RAM
XP SP3
SmartNav 4, V3.2.35, USB powered hub (via Dell display)

Cheers, Sean

[VincentG]

Which renderer do you have set by default, for google earth? (DirectX or OpenGL)

What version of google erath are you using?

What video card do you have installed on the system?

[Sean]

Hello Vincent,

Thanks for your prompt response, details are as follows...

Renderer is DirectX.

Version of Google earth... 4.3.7191.6508 (beta)

Video card is an ATI RADEON X300 series


Cheers, Sean

[VincentG]

Have you tried version 5.0, of google earth?

Tried switching to OpenGL?

[Sean]

OK, I've installed version 5 of Google earth and tried switching to OpenGL.

OpenGL made no difference in version 4 of Google earth.

The issue is only slightly better in version 5 of Google earth and it doesn't matter whether I am using DirectX or OpenGL as the renderer.

Task manager shows SmartNAV mouse movement in Google earth 5 produces 50-60% CPU usage and only 2-7% CPU usage in other programs.

Any other ideas ?

Cheers, Sean

[VincentG]

Any other applications running in the background?

[Sean]

Nothing apart from the usual anti virus & spyware programs. Windows security centre functions are turned off, so there should be no clashes there.

I had this problem with some Shockwave games 5-7 years ago on an old Pentium III laptop with the Smartnav 2. Didn't solve it then either.

It's puzzling.

Sean

[VincentG]

Can you try running it, with the unit, on a seprate system?

[Sean]

Hi Vincent,

A quick message to close off this thread.

For a host of other reasons I ended up reformatting and re-partitioning the hard drive on my machine. Installing all software, including the latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, SmartNAV drivers and Google earth on C:/ drive. Previously programs had been split between 2 logical drives.

Everything have been working well for over a month now. There is no problem that I can see with the SmartNAV unit/drivers and Google Earth or any other program on using for that matter.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers, Sean